Main menu

Translations of “The Stranger” by Albert Camus

Why does the header title on your page keep changing?What on earth does “O XÉNOS” or “DER FREMDE” mean?

The titles are various translations of Albert Camus’ famous novel L’Étranger. I named my blog after one of the English translations, The Stranger. I also happened to lose my special copy of The Stranger on a cab ride to Lincoln Center during fashion week.

Come on. Mandarin is one of your native languages. Why have you written “JÚ WÀI RÉN” instead of “局外人”?

Several languages use their own unique alphabets and characters. I’ve represented them with their English phonetic equivalents simply because it is more aesthetically pleasing. The font that I use for my header only supports English phonetic characters. Being the pedantic fart I am when it comes to web design, I refuse to use alternating fonts for my header.

I’ve managed to gather the translations together in a list below. You can consult it whenever you’re curious as to what strange language you might be seeing. If I’ve misspelt anything, leave a note in the comments.

Cizinec – Czech

De Vreemdeling – Dutch

Den Fremmede – Danish

Der Fremde – German

El Extranjero – Spanish

Främlingen – Swedish

Ha Zar – Hebrew

I Bang In – Korean

I Hou Jin – Japanese

Jú Wài Rén – Chinese (Mandarin)

Közöny – Hungarian

L’Estrany – Catalan

L’Étranger – French

Lo Straniero – Italian

Neznaiomec – Ukranian

Nieznajomy – Polish (Thanks Patryk!)

O Estrangeiro – Portugese

O Xénos – Greek

Postorinii – Russian

Sivullinen – Finnish

Străinul – Romanian (Thanks Nora!)

Stranac - Croatian

Stranac – Serbian (Thanks Srdjan!)

Strannikut – Bulgarian

Võõras -Estonian (Thanks Mariliis!)

Yabanci – Turkish

The list is incomplete, so contributions are welcome and highly recommended!

absolutely astonished by what I see here; love your blog and how you relate fashion to art (something which is sadly uncommon in many fashion publications nowadays – right American Vogue, this was personal). The Stranger in Polish would be: ‘Nieznajomy’. Good luck, hope to see you soon :*

Thank you Patryk! I was kind of confused by the Polish translation. On the Polish Wikipedia they had it put down as “Obcy”, but I found different names for it on other sites as well. I think “Nieznajomy” sounds way cooler though

that is the official translation of the novel’s title but it makes little sense in Polish – especially if we consider that Obcy is also how they translated Alien with Sigourney Weaver. Camus wouldn’t be delighted haha
xxx

Just wanted to help out a little, because maybe you are interested
In Estonian if you want to say “The Stranger” it is Võõras (google translate also gives you the correct answer if you type it in there )